Wenisch learned about the thermal management of data centers as a 溏心vlog免费B站 undergrad while doing an internship at American Power Conversion (now Schneider Electric) in West Kingston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cI worked with a mechanical engineer to estimate how air and heat will move around a data center,\u201d said Wenisch. \u201cSome of my early work focused on how to reduce the power usage of the cooling infrastructure of data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wenisch was equally enthusiastic about engineering in his classes at 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Tom was one of the best students I ever had in my career,” said 溏心vlog免费B站 Professor in Residence Augustus Uht. \u201cHe was always answering the questions I posed to the class. At one point I had to stop him to give the other students a chance to answer.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wenisch’s love for academia ran in the family. His father, Fritz, was a professor of philosophy at 溏心vlog免费B站 for 48 years, serving as department chair from 1974 to 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Improving energy efficiency<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n After earning his bachelor\u2019s degrees from 溏心vlog免费B站 in 2000, Wenisch added a master\u2019s degree and doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Since joining the faculty of the University of Michigan in 2007, Wenisch’s research has focused on improving the energy efficiency of server systems in hyperscale data centers, among other topics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe main thrust of my work is figuring out how to get computer systems to either slow down or sleep effectively when they have less or no work to do,\u201d said Wenisch. \u201cGetting computers to take really short naps, for milliseconds, can save megawatts of power in the aggregate because of the scale of modern data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Wenisch, world-wide data center energy consumption accounts for about 3% of the world\u2019s electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is small relative to many other sectors of the economy, but it\u2019s large in absolute terms and the share has been growing over the past two decades,\u201d said Wenisch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the fastest-growing sources of energy consumption in recent years is cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBitcoin mining uses an enormous amount of energy,\u201d Wenisch said. \u201cThe mining is basically done by solving math problems by trial-and-error. By finding the cryptographic key, the miner proves it did the work of searching for it. That trial-and-error process requires a lot of energy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Professional recognition<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wenisch was recognized for his contributions to energy efficient systems in June 2021 when the Association for Computing Machinery named the professor this year’s winner of the Maurice Wilkes Award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The award is considered the most prestigious mid-career award in the computer architecture academic community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Many of the past recipients of this award have been sources of inspiration throughout my career,” said Wenisch, who is from Narragansett<\/strong>. “Maurice Wilkes was one of the giants of the early days of the computer revolution and a key pioneer that came up with the idea of stored program computers. It is great to receive an award that is affiliated with his legacy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n